The tomato war between Red Hat, Novell and the developer Gnome community about Mono and its legal safety continued today. Novell's Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza replied to yesterday's editorial by Red Hat's Seth Nickell. Later, Red Hat's Havoc Pennington replied to Nat and Gnome's Andrew Sobala also threw a few (metallic) cents too. For future episodes, bookmark PlanetGnome (unverified rumors circulating on IRC claim that eggs might be used next if there is no sign of their lawyers meeting with Microsoft to try to give an end to the saga). In any case, you don't want to miss this.

"But we are not going to allow Microsoft to tell us what software we write and which technologies we use."

That folks, is about as dangerous, legally, as it gets. In an argument over whether and how Open Source developers are infringing upon Microsoft technologies, one of the leading Open Source developers, and an executive for one of her major corporate sponsors, says he'll ignore, and instruct others to ignore, Microsoft's various patents and other 'intellectual property' assets.

I'm sorry, Nat, but if Microsoft instructs you not to use their patented technologies, the answer is not: f$#k you!

Attitudes like that will lead to the end of Open Source software if we're not very careful.